


Hanging by a Thread

by Crepuscular



Category: Doom (Video Games)
Genre: Gen, La Tailor Girl Mod
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-29
Updated: 2018-06-29
Packaged: 2019-05-30 08:42:00
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,433
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15093203
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Crepuscular/pseuds/Crepuscular
Summary: A tailor is trapped on a doomed mars base.





	Hanging by a Thread

**Author's Note:**

> This is a short fic I made based on a Doom mod known as La Tailor Girl. 
> 
> Credit for the character and mod belong to Hege Cactus. You can find their mod and the download for it on the zDoom forums.

You are just a tailor named Daina. Just some young, well-off lady from some small town in a busy state. 

Your life was quiet and peaceful a few weeks ago. Yet it feels like it has been forever since then. You stopped crying over your misfortune about fourteen days ago. You're going to survive, come Hell or high water.  
You would have definitely preferred high water over Hell, though. And you would have even more preferred not to be trapped on one of Mars's moons!

With trembling hands, you reload the energy shotgun. Your head is in a daze from the adrenaline running through you. You are sweating bullets right now, and your breath is ragged from anxiety. You are wearing nothing but a pair of sunglasses and a black bikini with flame prints, having lost your most recent change of clothes to an ambush only ten or so minutes ago. The acrid but strangely comforting smell of your sweat overpowers the wretched stench of the small pile of corpses you dragged in front of the door in order to try and slow the advance of your pursuers. Not that the meaty barricade will do much once they find you. But it has at least masked your scent from them long enough for you to reload your weapon and gather your wits about you. As it turns out, these monsters are just as offended by the stench of rot as a human is.

You can hear piglike snarls beyond the door. There is a sudden loud bang, accompanied by the sound of heavy teeth ripping through metal. You curse and jump in fright, causing an energy cell to slip free from your sweaty fingers and clatter to the floor. You curse furiously, forget about it, and finish reloading. You hope that seven cells is enough to kill them all. You turn around just in time to see a pair of big, gaping jaws bite through the door like tissue paper. Looking like eighty percent jaw and twenty percent legs, the affectionately named 'pinky' rams the rest of the way through the door and charges. You steady the weapon and fire dead-on as it stumbles and slips through the gutsy barricade. 

With deadly precision, you aim and fire. The strange, glowing weapon hums and fires bolts of pure plasma. The bullets pepper the pinky's sloped forehead, causing it to snarl and briefly stagger. The beast seems to still be wounded from its earlier attack, as it collapses to the floor with another blast. But another creature, a spiky spry-legged humanoid with brown, leathery skin, leaps upon its back as it dies and leaps straight towards you with a dreadful moan. You manage to blast its face off, but its momentum is too great to stop. With the last of its breath, the 'imp' rakes its claws against the side of your neck. You grunt in pain, but spin around to shoot the back of its head after it slams into the wall with crippling force.

You whip back around to the door. Your breath is still steady, your gun raised towards the massive breach in the door. You want to wipe away the foul sulphur-smelling blood obscuring your vision, but are too frightened to do anything other than wait with bated breath for another assailant. You wait there for what feels like minutes, waiting for some new ugly freak to come through. To wait for you to let down your guard. But the only things that answers your fear are the idle hums and beeps of the machinery in the server room you have holed up in.

The hallway past the broken door is quiet. Slowly, nervously, you lower your gun. You check your neck. No wound, not even any soreness. But your sunglasses have fallen off and broken against the cold, tiled floor. You can see the what remains of it dissolving into thin air. Somehow, even something as mundane as a pair of sunglasses has magical powers here. At least, that's how you like to call the effect. Attacks bounce off, clothes take damage. Different clothes give different effects. Even if you're struck on bare skin, as long as you are wearing something that could be defined as 'clothes,' your body remains unhurt. Not only that, but it gives you some serious physical power. You caved in a zombie's head once with a high kick. It was awesome! Until you realized that had to clean all the blood and gore out of your hair after. Then it was only kind of awesome.

Even your talent for tailoring is unreal here. Perfect outfits that would normally take weeks or even months to create can be made from nothing more than a measurable quantity of fabric, which seems almost ubiquitous around here. Anything from metal to plastic to polyester can be made from just mundane cotton and a good pair of sewing needles. Which makes no sense, given that all of the weapons and technology you have found suggest that you are in some kind of research or military facility. You have resigned to simply not thinking too hard about it, since you have far more pressing matters to attend to every day.

Swallowing your disgust at the aftermath of your fight, you carefully step over the bodies. Slippery organs squish between your toes. You grimace, but do not gag. Not since it once nearly got you killed. You carefully poke your head out into the hall. Nothing down the left, and nothing down the right. Well, except for the large mess of bodies. Whoever showed up here before you gave the demons one hell of a fight.

You silently thank your mom and dad for being gun nuts. You hope they are alright, that this nightmare is for you and you alone. Hell, you even thank them for being fitness freaks. Your body is strong and athletic only because their devotion to exercise rubbed off on you. Your father in particular always wanted to make sure you were a strong and confident woman. He told you to never let other people change you, to be the person you want to be while taking the feedback of others. That you should always be able to hold your own in a fight. But most importantly, he told you to learn and to be open to change. Sure, you were always a bit on the pudgy side, but you made sure to stay strong and athletic nonetheless.  
You smile nostalgically. If only he could see you now. Covered in the blood and guts of horrific demon-things. That crazy old man would probably laugh and try to help you out.

_Your papa didn't raise a failure._ He always said with a proud smile and with a slap on your back.

Even amidst this horrible facility, you smile as your chest swells up with pride and determination. You're going to survive. You're going to find out what the hell is happening here. And most importantly, you are going to find a way back home. 

This place is weird. Really weird. But if it weren't for all the bullshit magic stuff with clothes, those claws would have cleanly severed your head. You continue walking down the hallway.  
Truth be told, most of this hallway's mess wasn't your doing. Most of these attacks were done with bullets. Lots of them. There are scorch marks on the walls where fireballs had landed, but there is not a single green-armored corpse around. As far as you can tell, the people with green armor are the people who used to guard this facility. Or maybe you're just projecting because green-armored humans are the only ones that have not tried killing you yet. Because they're all permanently dead, of course, but it's the thought that counts. You can't help but project.

So you suspect there is another survivor around who is sweeping up the majority of these 'demons.' Maybe another 'green guy?' You've tried taking some of the armor off of the corpses. But it always falls apart in your hands. It's like nothing makes sense around here!  
You look at one of the demon's corpses. Twisted, hate-filled eyes stare blankly back at you. You think the things you're fighting are Demons, at least. You take a nearby blunt object and bash its head in. They fit the bill pretty well, even when they're dead. You've taken to smashing their heads in just to make sure they're not faking it. Clever bastards tried that once on you. Not gonna happen again on your watch.


End file.
